A Comparative Study Of Translation Strategies For English Translation Of Diamond Sutra From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

“Classics” mainly refers to an acknowledged work which is proved by history andrepresents a height, depth and width a people’s culture has reached. The purpose of Englishtranslation of Chinese classics is to enable the western readers to gain an accurate andcomprehensive understanding of Chinese traditional cultures. The spreading and translationof Buddhism have produced a profound and wide influence on many aspects of the orientalcultures, esp. Chinese culture. Eugen A. Nida studied the translation of Bible systematicallythus proposed functional equivalence theory and developed it into dynamic equivalence,which enriched modern translation theories. Buddhism, as one of the three major globalreligions, also has much value of research. In addition, the spreading and development ofBuddhism and its translation are closely related to each other. However, the research on thisaspect from the perspective of adaptation theory is less or non-systematic so far.According to Adaptation Theory, the process of language use is one of constantlinguistic choice and dynamic adaptation of contexts is a core concept. As for translation,the reconstructive process of target language is largely restricted by cultural contexts. InEnglish translation of Chinese classics, dynamic adaptation to different levels of culturalcontexts must be sought in order to retain Chinese cultural features and help westernreaders to have an accurate and comprehensive understanding of Chinese culture, that is tosay, the surface cultures sharing common cultural characteristics can adapt to the contextby means of direct exchange, while the deep cultures sharing special cultural characteristicssuch as social politics and systems, national cultural psychology and religious culture canadapt to the context through dynamic equivalence. It is assumed that dynamic adaptationhelps to realize cultural equivalence between source and target text. The author in the thesis makes a comparative study of different translation strategiesemployed for two English versions of Diamond Sutra from the perspective of adaptationtheory. The research is focused on the levels of cultural context and linguistic contextadaptation. By establishing mini-database, the author compared and analyzed thesimilarities and differences of translation strategies such as foreignization, domestication,literal and free translation, contextual amplification, omission and accommodation betweentwo English versions of Diamond Sutra, then proposes that foreignization and literaltranslation should be a major strategy for Chinese Buddhism translation and other religioustexts, and domestication and free translation should be minor one. Meanwhile, a translatorshould take into account style, ideology and other factors so as to ensure that the selectedtarget language dynamically adapt to linguistic and cultural context of target text and retainthe original linguisticfeatures faithfully. It requires that the translator must takes great painsin conveying the deep cultural connotations and its superficial information of source andtarget text accurately and comprehensively for the purpose of spreading Chinese traditionalculture and making effective international communication come true.